An Earth-friendly way to easily upgrade and fix your own computer

This update is primarily about the imminent Shenzhen Maker Faire 2017.
The HDMI review continues (leaving time for SZMF). A particularly
insightful and revealing conversation takes place on the Reprap Forum.

Revision 2.7.5 EOMA68-A20 HDMI Layout

So covering this first: the review continues, bear in mind that one
mistake and it will be yet another $2,000 USD gone of the available
budget, and no working HDMI. Also bear in mind that Richard is
volunteering his time and expertise, for which all of us should be
extremely grateful, not least because of the extremely valuable
information that he’s providing. You can see the progress being made
here and also help out.

The current issue to be resolved is that the impedance of each HDMI
TX/RX line is, according to the CAD software, 89 Ohms when they each
need to be 50 Ohms. The differential impedance is reasonably close.
Richard is doing some calculations on the surrounding GND keep-out
area so as to be able to get the right numbers. According to Analog
Devices engineers, the differential-line impedance needs to be twice the
single-line impedance, otherwise it defeats the point of the exercise.

All of this is way, way too complicated for me to research: I
understand it but there’s absolutely no way I could do it on my own.
So, we are relying on Richard… who, once again to reiterate and
remind people, is volunteering his time and expertise. Without his
help it would be necessary to simply risk another $2,000 USD and
potentially end up with an extremely low probability of people getting
boards with a working HDMI interface.

So, for those people who are asking, “when will the board be ready,
when will it ship?” the answer remains and will always remain, “when
it’s ready.” Without a firm 100% proven pre-production
prototype there is absolutely no point in trying to create any kind of
schedule for the factory.

What that does is leave me free to deal with other aspects of this
extremely comprehensive project, such as Shenzhen Maker Faire. It’s
coming up again for another trip out of the country so as to continue
the 90-day-visitor visa stream. The one after this will be FOSDEM
2017.

Shenzhen Maker Faire 2017

If you recall, last year I was riding (or lying down on) the back seat
of a coach from Zhuhai to Shenzhen which leaked wonderfully warm
exhaust fumes into the passenger compartment. On waking up alive, I
passed a huge billboard for Shenzhen Maker Faire 2016: it was the
first time I’d heard of it, and it was already the afternoon of the
last day. I figured it would be silly to miss the opportunity to
present the EOMA68 project there the following year, as well as the 3D
printing and ecological and cost-saving aspects of what I’m doing. By
giving them a huge list of over seven (and increasing) libre
hardware/software projects I received approval for a free booth this
year at their 300% over-subscribed website. The page went up this
weekend.

I’ve basically been working very, very quickly, in some cases
overnight, on a range of GPLv3+ licensed completely open designs, with
assistance from various communities, and publishing all modifications
as they happen, and all of which are targeted at both cost savings by
using much lower-cost MCUs and components, or are based on boards that
are extremely common and low-cost so that the components are easy to
get hold of, and so on. Here’s a list of the various forums and
sub-projects:

STL47o is an Arduino- and Due-compatible board using an STM427 (the F471
isn’t available in Shenzhen and has to be imported!) so it should
hugely undercut the troubled Atmel / Microchip. The Due is incredibly
(relatively) expensive in Shenzhen

A huge upgrade to RAMPS 1.4 called
RD3D. Takes six stepper modules, can
take an extra two steppers on an expansion header, has an on-board
microSD card slot, has five MOSFETs, and yet is still a two-layer board and uses
pretty much exactly the same components as RAMPS. However, it also
supports both the Arduino and the Due so people can transition from
Marlin on slower 16-bit MCUs to the much better RepRapFirmware on a
Due. Later (much later) I will work on porting RepRapFirmware to the
STL47o.

A TMC2660 dual stepper board that is
two-layer and is designed to be hand-assembled. It’s also deliberately
relatively large (65 mm x 78 mm) so as to have good thermal dissipation.
Also there is far less pressure on the layout when the board is
larger. It’s also designed to be usable on other 3D controller
boards.

An A4982 dual stepper
board, again using a
large PCB size and the fact that the A4982 has an exposed pad for much
better thermal dissipation. Again, it has the advantage of being
hand-assemblable. The one thing, however, about the A4982 is that it
doesn’t have the same sort of SPI-based controller interface as the
Trinamic steppers.... so I added a ridiculously-low-cost STM8 MCU
($0.24) to control the VREF and MS1/MS2 micro-stepping over I2C
instead of using a $1.20 digipot and still not being able to control
MS1/MS2. It also might actually be possible to turn it into its own
independent board with a G-code control interface over UART.

A GPLv3+ Filament width
sensor board which
measures a shadow from three different angles in real time, so that
changes in filament diameter can be compensated for. After buying
some Chinese filament that had a whopping 10%
variation in diameter, which due to a square law is an absolutely
enormous 19% change in volume. It’s basically a
re-implementation of a proprietary design: CC Non-Commercial is
unfortunately a proprietary license, which prevents and prohibits
anybody but its creator from profiting from it, stymying development.

A GPLv3+ licensed IR differential z-height sensor, which is a
re-implementation of dc42’s IR sensor board, using the much lower-cost
STM8 MCU instead of the ATTiny45.

It’s worth mentioning that during the development of RD3D, a major
design flaw was discovered in RAMPS 1.4: anyone using RAMPS 1.4 in
their 3D printer should not push the total amount of current it uses
beyond 8 Amps (total). That’s only 96 Watts (total) at 12 V, where all
of that budget is required for the heated bed alone. A
review is here.
Basically, be prepared for burn-out, and if you are considering
running the heated bed for prolonged periods of time to get up to 100
- 110 °C for ABS… don’t.

The status on all of these is that the PCBs have been ordered: half of
them the components arrived this morning (Monday 24th at time of
writing) and will be shipped to me later today; the other three have
just literally been ordered this morning, but are unlikely to be
manufactured before SZMF, so I will assemble them actually at the
booth, alongside the Riki200 and the Cheap-and-Cheerful Taobao Clone.

The Two 3D Printers Going to SZMF2017

Just as an aside: the Riki200 is
turning out to be the absolute best 3D printer I’ve ever made. After
six assembly and four design attempts, it’s about time. On the
Cheap-and-Cheerful Taobao clone, whilst mine has been okay - some of
the 3D-printed parts snapped because the PLA quality is too low but
the actual metal components were fine - my friend’s 3D printer has
turned out to be a total nightmare. The ridiculous saga involves:

Only sending 80% of the parts (luckily it was ordered through a
Chinese National so they actually had leverage to get the rest sent
along)

8 mm rods that in some cases were 7.9 mm diameter whilst others
actually had ripple in the metal

LM8UU bearings which have literally self-destructed in under two weeks

PLA from China that keeps blocking the nozzle (strangely, the PLA
with the same brand name that I ordered has been fine)

An extruder design that kept slipping (the developer redesigned
it since I ordered mine… poorly)

Parts that keep on snapping due to the poor quality of the PLA that
the shipper used

We also blew up three sets of RAMPS 1.4 MOSFETs until we noticed that
the replacement MK3 Alu heated bed we picked from a China clone has
2 oz copper… meaning that its resistance was half what it should be
(0.7 Ohms). We “solved” this by simply… cutting out one of the
heated bed tracks! We also destroyed two TMC2100 Polulu steppers
because they were reversed, and one A4988 stepper. I’m sure there are a
few other things we destroyed as well, but honestly there are so many
I’m actually beginning to forget.

Regardless, I’m just absolutely amazed at both my friend’s patience,
but also he is being challenged to solve each of the problems, and
succeeding, which is great to witness, particularly as this is
literally his first ever 3D printer.

The Reprap Forum Discussion

The relevant part starts
here. If you
recall, I returned to the Reprap forum after a couple of years break,
and got the distinct and unnerving feeling that it had turned into a
“ghost town.” Neil, in a previous update, explained some of the
background, but it turns out that there is a lot more than it first
seemed.

As you can see from that first post referenced above in the thread, it
turns out that a number of long-standing open hardware contributors
are getting abusive messages from people who haven’t even bought from
them, claiming “how can they possibly have designed and published and
sold such utterly dangerous and criminally fraudulent s**t?” It
turns out that there are Chinese criminals doing the trick of putting
10 uF capacitors into 100 uF cases, or doing shoddy manufacturing simply
to be able to defraud people, and it’s getting dangerous. The
designers - whose web site of course the criminals put loud and clear
on the fraudulent product - have become so distressed by the torrent
of abuse they receive from people deceived by the criminals that
they’ve made a conscious decision to cease and desist publishing their
work.

However, it turns out that there’s more: many of the open hardware
engineers, those that don’t accept the offers of enslavement by
proprietary Western companies, instead end up being exploited in some
way. The worst and most public case was Makerbot (the people who took
published prior art from forum online discussions, patented it, and
used it to raise VC funding, but there’s a lot more to it than that).
This seems to be a consistent theme, as it’s not just one person: it’s
happened to several people, several times, and over the past few
decades they’re getting fed up with it. So… they’re going
underground.

This is basically a major blow for Open Hardware and for the 3D
printing community, particularly in combination with the fact that
many people are publishing their work in secret and/or publishing it -
late - under proprietary licenses such as the CC “Non-Commercial”
license. Development is now fragmented into separate focused
communities: if you try to communicate with them and help them out,
their reluctance to respond stems from their negative experiences of
their work having been exploited. That includes successful, well-known,
and well-liked 3D printing companies as well as individuals trying to
make money from Open Hardware development.

As a libre hardware and software advocate, this isn’t something I can
tolerate. So, I’m asking for ideas and would like to invite people who
make a living from Open Hardware, and those people who would also like
to support it, to think of some possible solutions. We cannot let
criminals and spongers “win”: there has to be a way. I’ll be using
the designs that I’m making as an experiment to see what works, with
one notable exception on what is not up for “negotiation”: the 100%
commitment to GPLv3+ licensed designs and firmware, published as it
is being developed, not “after the fact” when of course it
is far too late for anyone to help - is absolute.

Micro Desktop Housing for Computer Card

This is a Micro Desktop base unit and power supply unit with a beautiful laser-cut stack of 3mm plywood panels that creates an aesthetically attractive tiny base unit for your Computer Cards. Excludes Computer Card, keyboard, mouse and VGA monitor.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $12 Worldwide

$450

PIY Laptop Housing Kit for Computer Card

This Print-It-Yourself (PIY) kit includes all the parts, cabling and
boards (main, power, and controller, assembled and tested), and
battery, charger, keyboard, LCD, and CTP-LCD for trackpad that are
needed to build a complete Libre Laptop once you 3D print the
enclosure from the freely available GPLv3+ licensed plans. Excludes
Computer Card.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $25 Worldwide

$500

PFY Laptop Housing Kit for Computer Card

This Printed-For-You (PFY) kit has everything needed to create a full
EOMA68 Laptop, including a 3D printed set of casework parts,
bamboo plywood panels, tested and assembled PCBs, cables, battery,
charger, keyboard, LCD, and CTP-LCD for trackpad. Available in a
variety of colors and materials. Excludes Computer Card.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $25 Worldwide

Material / Color

$1,200

Completely Assembled Laptop + Computer Card

A meticulously hand-assembled and fully-tested laptop. Includes your choice of EOMA68-A20 Computer Card and 3D-printed casework.

For those people who would like the opportunity to meet the designers
and have them personally go over the project's development, history,
future direction and much more, a week's time can be made available to
meet with you personally, to do a hands-on workshop to help you (and
any number of additional attendees) through the process of putting
together your own fully-functioning laptop and even take you through
the process of building and installing the software. Also included
will be one Laptop with a Computer Card which will be assembled
on-site. You must provide travel, accommodation, tools and a suitable
workshop and presentation space. Contact us directly for details.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free Worldwide Shipping

Material / Color

$20

PCMCIA/EOMA68 Breakout Board

One PCMCIA/EOMA68 Breakout Board with one surface mount PCMCIA header, and tracks to some convenient 2.54-mm-spaced through-holes. Added by popular demand, for access, tinkering, development work, testing, etc.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$35

Pass-through Card

A simple card that takes in HDMI and USB and passes them on. Turns a Laptop Housing into a portable, battery-powered dock for your smartphone, USB-HDMI dongle computer, and tablet, or a second screen, keyboard, and mouse for your existing laptop or desktop PC.

Orders placed now ship Sep 06, 2019.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$15

USB + HDMI Cable Set for Standalone Operation

Includes a Micro HDMI Type D cable and 3-way USB-OTG Host-Charger cable tested and known to work with EOMA68 Computer Cards. These are the cables you need to run a Computer Card as a standalone device without the need for a housing. Also useful with the Micro Desktop or Laptop Housing to add a second screen and extra USB port.